On Wednesday afternoon, Sarah Champion MP is bringing a debate to parliament with a view to outlaw prostitution platforms. This is directly inspired by the recent FOSTA-SESTA package signed into US law by Donald Trump, which saw the removal of
many online advertising platforms sex workers used to stay alive. Read the full SWARM statement on FOSTA-SESTA here
.

This law will NOT decrease trafficking, but instead give abusers more power as workers are forced to lower rates, increase services, and work on the street to make up for earnings lost through the removal of these platforms.

Online platforms are a LIFELINE for us. Removing them removes a life-saving barrier between us and dangerous clients. This law is murder.

We need to name the problem - criminalisation and policies which silence us and make us more vulnerable. We have the answer: decrimalisation and trade union organising.

Please show your support for sex workers. Help defend against this. Meet at 1pm on Wednesday 4th July at Parliament Square. Bring placards, red umbrellas, masks for anonymity if you need, and most of all your energy and your anger!

A campaign group of anti-sex works MPs comprising of feminists and religious moralists have just published a biased campaign document claiming all the usual bogies about trafficking, organised crime and so on.

The group misleadingly calls itself the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade, as if it was an official committee of parliament. It is not, it is just a self appointed campaign group with no attempt
to include MPs independent of the campaign nor to represent the wider views of Parliament.

Of course sex workers are definitely not party to the report., and in fact have been protesting against the report to highlight its lack of independence and representation of sex worker input.

A roughly 200-strong collection of sex workers and activists came out to Parliament Square on Wednesday to make their case, with banners such as "Decriminalise sex work, for safety's sake."

The report titled Behind Closed Doors targets technology based tools used by modern sex workers, such as pop-up brothels using Airbnb, and internet platforms like Vivastreet and Adultwork, claimed to be the most significant enablers of
sex-work and sex trafficking.

The Labour MP Sarah Champion iused the report to call for internet censorship along the lines of the US FOSTA internet censorship. By making internet platforms liable to penalties for content posted by their users, they end up censoring and
blocking large swathes of related content just in case something prohibited gets through. In America the law makers specifically prohibit material that aids sex trafficking, but because there is no obvious way of checking whether an advert is for
a legal sex worker or for a trafficked sex worker, then the companies have to take down the legal stuff too. In fact the effects are so wide spread that even dating services have been taken down just in case traffickers are lurking somewhere
amongst the dating couples.

But the campaigners don't stop there, comments to the media suggests a push for the UK to adopt The Nordic Model, a legal framework in which the selling of sexual services is legal but the purchase of those services is criminalised. The model has
been largely panned by sex workers, activists and researchers as ineffective and unsafe.

Furthermore in light of the publicity for the report, Jeremy Corbyn was asked by Sky's Sophy Ridge about the subject and he came out in favour of the #Nordic model model of criminalising men buying sex.

So, as usual from the 'progressive' left are enjoying a good sneer at men, and will happily see them imprisoned and fined just for wanting to get laid.

Comment: Disappointed by Corbyn

8th July 2018. Thanks to Alan

I'm disappointed to hear Jeremy Corbyn apparently backing the Nordic Model. In the past, he has favoured
decriminalisation, to loud squeals from the pointless and reliably mouthy Jess Phillips. John McDonnell, by contrast, has always been on the side of sex workers.

I am baffled by the behaviour of nominally Labour politicians who prattle about sex work while ignoring sex workers. I can't imagine Champion or Phillips spouting about railways without talking to the RMT and ASLEF or about higher education
without consultation with the UCU. I think the organizations representing sex workers should hammer this point home at every opportunity.